Rabaul’s High School

Produces Successful Citizens

A FEW months late but now re ceived, is the “first edition” of The Beacon, the magazine of the Rabaul Elementary A and High School.

This rather cumbersome school name hides a very remarkable in stitution which caters for a large proportion of the education of Rabaul’s Chinese community—an educational task of the Administra tion which tends to be swamped by the publicity that always surrounds “Native education.”

The school is co-educational and contains Infant, Primary, Secondary and Commercial Departments—an arrangement that is unusual in any Administration establishment in Papua-New Guinea.

Considerable difficulties have had to be overcome in the last 10 years; to bring the school to its present, high standard. Conditions were confused when Chinese families; began to return to Rabaul after the; war and in the midst of their con fusion the school was established in old army buildings.

In 1951, it moved to new premises which for the first time included an Assembly Hall, rooms for the staff and facilities for tennis and basketball, and playgrounds for the youngsters.

The school now has a library, Scout and Guide troops; a prefect system and School Houses have be come part of the tradition. In short, an esprit de corps has been created amongst both teachers and students —an essential ingredient for any school that aims higher than to be an establishment simply for acquir ing the rudiments of education.

There are 10 teachers on the staff' including the headmaster, Mr. A. T Shanley, who is at present on leave in the United Kingdom. All of these believe in the school and hav« worked enthusiastically beyond th« requirements of duty to establish f along its present lines.

But the school is most proud o:< past and present pupils who art doing well.

Mr. Stephen Cheong, now s teacher at the school, and an old-boy is the first Australian-trained ano qualified Chinese teacher with thu P-NG Department of Education Miss Ellen Tsa, an old-girl of thu school, is at present following in hu footsteps and attending the Bathurs Teachers’ Training College in NSW She will graduate from the College at the end of this year.

Mr. Paul Mow, another ex-pup]: graduated recently from Sydne University as a Bachelor o: Economics—the first New Guine- Chinese to graduate from an Ausa tralian University. Mr. Thomas

Mow, his father, was a teacher at Ihe school until 1952.

Dozens of other students who at tended the school have passed on o the Great Public Schools in Aus ralia, or have successfully passed :xaminations in commercial and ither subjects in the Territory. One ;irl is now training as a nurse at Brisbane General Hospital; one old loy has entered a Theological College in Sydney to train for the (ministry.

The Beacon itself, is a well iroduced magazine, quite up to the tandard of overseas school journals, ull of contributions from pupils nd bristling with photographs of bright youngsters who n the years ahead must play an pcreasingly important part in the ffairs of the Territory.

It is the aim of the school to pre lare them to assume these obliga ions and responsibilities.